Nicholas Sarkozy charged with accepting money from Gaddafi

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was handed preliminary charges Wednesday over allegations he accepted millions of euros in illegal campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A judicial official told The Associated Press that investigative judges overseeing the probe gave the ex-president charges of illegally funding his 2007 winning campaign, passive corruption and receiving money from Libyan embezzlement.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The charges came after Sarkozy was questioned for two days by anticorruption police at a station in Nanterre, northwest of the French capital. The investigation involving funding for his 2007 president campaign. Investigators are examining allegations that Gadhafi’s regime secretly gave the politician 50 million euros overall for his campaign.

The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time — 21 million euros. In addition, the alleged payments would violate French rules against foreign financing and requiring that the source of campaign funds be declared.

The least Sarkozy could do now is apologize for the hugest errors he made in his one term, but all the same, I think his political career at this point is over, and his associations with Gaddafi were wrong too. Naturally, if he played any part in Gaddafi's overthrow without ensuring there'd be a suitable replacement and democracy/sanity could reign in Libya, then that's another grave mistake he made. So, in retrospect, nobody needs to feel too sorry to see Sarkozy get charged with felonies.